


Five Times

by Davechicken



Series: Kylux - Fluff & Angst [33]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Pre-Slash, if you squint really hard - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-08
Updated: 2016-10-08
Packaged: 2018-08-20 05:41:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8238004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Davechicken/pseuds/Davechicken
Summary: Five times Hux hated Kylo. (One time he did not.)
(As much.)





	

A boy with thunder around his shoulders, and lightning hidden behind fingertips. Hux watches, from afar, as he’s heralded as if the salvation of them all. 

He does not look like the salvation of anything. He looks like the child Hux never was: sullen, selfish, and surrounded by sycophants. 

They cater to him, title him, and what has he done to earn it? Be born with fake fire in his belly. He doesn’t even seem to _care_ , and that is the worst part of all. He’s here, but in body only. No real devotion to their cause.

Hux hates him.

***

In his lessons, he studies warriors of old. Names of power, but names that couldn’t stay there. An Emperor who fell; an Enforcer who pushed him. They were to be idolised and imitated, but Hux knew they were only half worth it. 

No matter the power their forebears had wielded, they had – in the end – failed. 

He knows the boy – they call him _Ren,_ now (given a name, where Hux had broken fingers to claim his) – comes from the line of traitors.

No one else sees the Anakin in him, but Hux does. 

It is only a matter of time.

***

His ship is meant to be _his_. His prize for a battle hard-fought. His spoils of victory, the rank and title graced upon his shock-red hair as if blood crowned him.

He is supposed to feel something.

He did. Right until they stationed the _boy_ with him. As if he needs him? Hux has climbed this far without their ethereal ‘power’ of the Force. What use is floating things? The man seems only good for extracting information, or instilling fear.

Sadly, he could do that to _Hux’s men_ , too, and so no one can sleep at nights. It’s a disaster.

***

They stand in the audience chamber, where the usurper pulls attention from him. Time divided between them, and he’s sure they’ve been put here to urge the other higher, to use petty rivalry as a knife wedged in ribs.

Look at me. Look at me. Not at him.

He doesn’t even show his face, hiding behind that cowardly death-mask, as if he’s already gone. Hux remembers the nose and ears. When he feels too angry, that memory keeps him sane. 

Failure after failure, and the Leader never seems to punish.

Hux would be dead by now. There is no justice.

***

His pride and joy is dying. He feels her groans beneath his feet, knows this egg won’t crack to release a phoenix. Nothing good will come of this. Nothing good at all.

Ash in his mouth at the failure, the post-incident reports already shadows in his mind. Things he’d done wrong, places he’d failed to fortify.

Somehow, he’s sure the boy is to blame. His obsessions, his maps, his girl. His _arrogance_. 

He’d never liked the Starkiller, and so it’s all his fault.

The Leader might have Hux’s head. In a way, he does not blame him in the slightest.

***

The boy in the med bay will not let the droids attend to him. Hux would let him die, if it were up to him. Why not? Self-inflicted. The Leader couldn’t blame him.

And yet…

“Why?” he asks, a single question.

The boy doesn’t answer, not straight off.

“I killed him.” Much later. “My father.”

Resistance Scum. Deserved. (And yet…)

“It wasn’t enough. It will never be enough. Not for him, not for them… the girl was right.”

“About what?”

“I will never be strong enough.”

Hux knows the feeling. He knows it well. 

For once, maskless, he’s real again.


End file.
